Areas of Expertise & Dedication
Allison offers a refined and integrative approach to therapy, working with individuals, couples and families ages 18+ of all gender identities and sexual orientations.
Common aspects of therapeutic work with Allison include:
Expansion/contraction in life transitions
Identity and self-concept development
Welcoming relationship complexity and evolution
Resourcing in high-pressure careers
Nurturing the creative identity
Rest and resilience through grief, loss and death
Clinical language that may feel connected to these themes:
Trauma/ Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Body image concerns, disordered eating and/or exercise dependence
Anxiety, Depression, Mood Disorders
Rigidity, perseveration and compulsion/Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
Perfectionism
“But why can’t the language for creativity be the language of regeneration?”
Guidance through life transition
Therapy isn’t a guided path toward normalcy, nor a simplified “solution.” It’s a creative encounter with suffering as texture—the goal not to flatten, but to embroider with new meaning. Easier said than done when the texture is a strained marriage, an impending divorce, fertility struggles, career pressure, health challenges or death and loss.
Knowing the fear often inherent within these catalyzing events, I offer a space where clients can explore these moments not as self-limiting detours from their preferred paths, but as chapters in a larger, evolving story where judgment is not truncating their meaning making. Our work centers on understanding these experiences deeply through a prismatic lens rather than a fixed perspective. Here, therapy begins by inviting estrangement (a mild distance) from the experience—not to detach you from it, but to allow you to see it more expansively.
From the outset, this therapeutic work invites a soft but radical recalibration of identity: what once felt inextricably braided—your grief, regret, relational rupture or intellectual stasis—is not you. Rather, they emerge as distinct forces, stories framed around you, which can be named, observed, and held at arm’s length. Centering externalization—a key technique in narrative therapy—allows these difficulties to be viewed as external agents, opening space for resistance and transformation beyond felt helplessness. This isn’t a denial of suffering, but an excavation: a search for unique outcomes—moments when you’ve already acted outside the narrative of defeat—so that agency re-emerges as visible.
Alongside narrative reclamation, you’ll navigate the existential themes inherent to these life events—freedom, responsibility, mortality, isolation, and meaning—not as abstract categories, but as living dilemmas that call forth choice, revision, and poetic recommitment to your own authorship. In creating distance from shame and constriction, you reclaim curiosity; in tracing patterns with fresh eyes, you recover relational clarity; in slow embodiment, you reclaim presence beyond temporary “fix‑it” thinking and “tool seeking.”
Support for the creative identity
Therapy tailored for creative minds begins by honoring your long‑standing sense of difference—the tension between deviating from norms and feeling isolated for it. This life of vision often carries a fragile balance: inspiration and burnout, perfectionism and creative paralysis. Imposter syndrome whispers that your achievements are luck, your craft inadequate, your success undeserved—and yet these narratives can be reframed through careful inquiry and support. We listen for the critical junctures where passion becomes self‑doubt, or where ambition becomes numbing self‑critique—and then gently disentangle them.
In this space, your creative journey unfolds as a series of evolving chapters, each with its own narrative arc. Rather than viewing challenges like burnout or self-doubt as obstacles, we recognize them as pivotal plot points that offer opportunities for growth and transformation if alchemized intentionally.
By identifying moments where you've acted contrary to the dominant problem-saturated story—your 'unique outcomes'—we uncover instances of agency and resilience that have previously been overshadowed. This process of re-authoring your story empowers you to reclaim your creative voice, rather than falling under the illusion that it has left or was never there to begin with. As we co-create your new narrative, you develop a grounded sense of Self that serves as a stable foundation for your creative endeavors.